When Is The Obama Stimulus Going To Start Creating Jobs?

With the unemployment rate reaching the highest level in 26 years, the obvious question is: when is the Obama stimulus going to start creating some jobs? Shouldn't the funds be used to put people to work immediately rather than investing in long-term infrastructure projects that could take months to start? The following post from Economist's View discusses this topic further.

The stimulus package had two components, new spending and tax cuts. Everybody knew that the spending component would take time to put into place, six months or more for a lot of the infrastructure projects, and that meant that we needed something to increase demand and provide a bridge until the new spending comes online.

Enter the tax cuts that the GOP insisted upon, tax cuts that were a larger part of the stimulus package than I thought justified. These cuts were to come online immediately and stimulate demand until the spending could begin taking up some of the slack later in the year. I would have preferred targeted, non-infrastructure spending that could have been put in place almost as fast as the tax cuts (particularly those that simply require making existing programs more generous), but that type of spending was considered wasteful because it didn't add to our long-run capacity for growth and hence had little chance of being part of the stimulus package.

The problem was partly bad luck. A crisis hit and we had the bad luck of having an administration that opposed active intervention and though there was a bit of a stimulus attempt through a one time tax rebate, a strategy theory predicts won't do much to help, the real action in terms of stimulating the economy was left to the new administration. So nothing was done, nothing could have been done until the new administration took over, and given the insistence that any new spending be on infrastructure projects with clear benefits, tax cuts were the main hope for an immediate effect.

So if the policy has failed at this point, it is not the spending component since, fully consistent with predictions when it was enacted, it was going to be months before it could be of any help. What failed is the GOP's insistence that tax cuts be used to provide an immediate boost to the economy. Increasing food stamps, unemployment compensation, payments to help states with declining revenues and increasing demands for social services, payments to help unemployed workers maintain health care, digging (needed) holes, there were many, many other ways to provide more immediate relief and stimulate the economy at the same time, but no, it had to be tax cuts or nothing.

Finally, I want to note that what we maximize matters. For example, we can maximize GDP growth over the next ten or twenty years, or we can maximize employment over the next few months. Which we choose to maximize has a big effect on the policies we put in place. If we use the stimulus money to maximize GDP and growth - which is essentially what we did - that will have a much slower effect on employment than if we maximize employment directly. The efficiency argument always leads you to maximize output, and efficiency prevailed in the structure of the current package, but I think an argument can also be made that maximizing employment provides social benefits that are just as large, or larger.

Just noticed this, which makes a surprisingly similar point:

A Message to President Obama: Stop Priming the Pump, Hire the Unemployed, by Pavlina R. Tcherneva: Many have called President Obama’s stimulus plan a return to Keynesian policy. Some of us who like reading Keynes professionally or for leisure have already been scratching our heads. I have wondered in particular whether the plan isn’t set up to work in a manner completely backwards from what Keynes himself had in mind when he advocated economic stabilization by government.

There are two things to remember about Keynes’s fiscal policy proposals: 1) government spending was always linked to the goal of full employment... and 2) to achieve macro-stability and full employment, the government had to employ the unemployed directly into public works.

By contrast, most modern economists believe that 1) there is some natural level of unemployment that includes the structurally unemployed, which governments cannot generally tackle, and that 2) public employment is an inefficient use of public resources.

So, when the government is called to action, the economic profession has replaced Keynes’s “fiscal policy via public works” with a “leaky bucket pump-priming mechanism.”

How is the latter policy supposed to work? Instead of employing the unemployed directly, the idea is to generate large enough government expenditures to produce a level of economic growth that would, in turn, gradually reduce unemployment. For example, the government could spend money on various private sector contracts, stimulate different private industries, offer investment subsidies and tax cuts, and increase unemployment insurance payments, in hope that it will boost GDP sufficiently to reduce unemployment to desired levels. This is essentially the underlying logic behind President Obama’s stimulus package. But it is also a bit of a gamble.

Not all of these injections will be effective because the fiscal stimulus enters the economy through “a leaky bucket”. Some of the money will be lost in transit (because of administrative costs, for example) and much of it will have no direct job creation effects (e.g. the tax cut component of the recovery act). Nevertheless, despite this leaky bucket, the theory goes, sooner or later, large enough government expenditures will produce the kind of growth that would reduce unemployment. ...

All of this is ... why Keynes never had any “leaky bucket” or “pump priming” idea in mind. For him “the real problem fundamental yet essentially simple…[is] to provide employment for everyone” (Keynes 1980, 267) and the most bang for the buck from fiscal policy would be achieved via direct job creation. This he called “on the spot” employment via public works.

As I have argued elsewhere, it is useful to think of Keynesian fiscal policy, not as aggregate demand management, but as labor demand management. ...

Commentators often call this a policy of “make work” but Keynes didn’t advocate digging holes, burying jars with money and digging them out, or any other similarly worthless projects. The key was to marry the two goals: to employ the unemployed directly and to make sure that they do useful things. Once they are put to work on a particular project, Keynes argued, “there can be only one object in the economy, namely to substitute some other, better, and wiser piece of expenditure for it” (Keynes 1982, 146). We might as well ask a very basic question: is there really a shortage of useful things to do?

If we insist on calling ourselves Keynesians again, and more importantly, if President Obama’s plan for economic stabilization should generate rapid reduction in unemployment, it would help to set fiscal policy straight. Instead of relying on “leaky fiscal buckets” we could return to “labor demand management” a la Keynes that provides immediate employment opportunities to the unemployed via bold and creative public works projects, which generate useful output and services for all.

This post was republished from Mark Thoma's blog, Economist's View.

Water: The World's Most Valuable Resource

It may be hard to believe that the stuff that flows freely from our kitchen faucets is one of the most valuable resources in the world. However, as the world population approaches 9 billion people in 2050, this limited resource will become tremendously more valuable. See the following post from Daily Wealth to learn how you can profit from the opportunities in water investment.

If you're interested in water investing – like I am – Steve Hoffmann is someone you need to pay attention to.

I recently picked up Hoffmann's new book, Planet Water: Investing in the World's Most Valuable Resource. Hoffmann is well known in water circles. He's the founder of WaterTech Capital, a private group focused on water investing. He's also the creator of the Palisades Water Index, which many water funds use as a benchmark.

I've been researching water investments for years now. I believe that as the developing world becomes richer over the coming years, it's going to spend enormous amounts of money to secure clean water supplies. This means terrific opportunities to make money investing in water stocks.

Hoffmann's book has some good information and research on water issues, if dryly presented. Hoffmann is not the best of writers. Still, it's nice to have it all between the covers of one book. There are certainly many opportunities in the water sector for investors. It's one of the most exciting areas of the market to be a part of.

For one thing, it is an incredibly large sector. Water is the third-largest industry in the world, behind only oil and gas and electricity generation. For another, some of the drivers of water use are only getting bigger as this human drama unfolds. Hoffmann points to these three, among others:

· Industrialization. As a country develops, its water use expands even faster. As people earn more money, they wear better clothes and buy more consumer products. All of these things have a high water content. Not too many people understand how much water we use to make a pair of blue jeans, for instance. (It's about five gallons.) Yet this water use is all too real. Then there is the matter of diet. As people make more money, they shift to eating foods that have a much higher water content or that take more water to produce – fruits and vegetables and meats.

So all of this is a tremendous source of growth for water demand. India alone, for instance, expects water demand to double between now and 2025 – and industrial water demand should triple.

· Urbanization. More and more people around the world live in cities. And more are moving to cities with each passing year. In 2007, more than half of the world's population lived in cities for the first time in history. Our cities are also bigger than ever. For example, some 9% of the world's population lives in cities of more than 10 million people.

Well, people in cities use more water than those not in cities. To support all that water use requires a lot of pipes, pumps, and more. As Hoffmann writes, the infrastructure needed to support urban water use is "staggering."

· Globalization. When goods can more easily travel across borders, water use tends to increase. Suddenly, you can build cities in areas where older human societies would never have thought to build a large city. Basically, we've created a sort of virtual water trade.

"Countries with a relative abundance of water," Hoffmann writes, "can grow food and trade it to water-stressed countries." The sheiks in Dubai are grateful, no doubt.

As I've pointed out, water is big business. And Hoffmann goes through a variety of sectors, highlighting the issues facing each and compiling tables of companies in each space. Let's walk through a few of them.

The biggest part of the water industry – and the one everybody thinks of first – is the water utility group. There was a time when I liked the water utilities. I can say I've never lost money on a water utility. For years, investing in water utilities was an easy way to beat the market. But things are changing.

I've come to think that the water utilities have to support an enormous investment going forward. And they have to do that in a political environment not favorable to water price increases. Bad mix, that. Hoffmann agrees. "Public policy will dictate rate increases," he writes, and "water utilities will then [see] increasing pressure on profit margins."

For this reason, I'd pass on the water utilities. There are far better opportunities in the water industry's "picks and shovels" providers... the companies that provide products and services needed to supply clean water.

Take water treatment, for example... As Hoffmann writes: "The fundamentals of the [water] treatment sector... are extremely compelling. Virtually all global water quality issues come down to treatment in one form or another." Water treatment means taking raw water and purifying for some use, either industrial or for human consumption.

My favorite water treatment company is Nalco Holding (NLC), a company my readers have owned for a long time. Warren Buffett recently joined us as the firm's largest shareholder. Hoffmann gives a nod to Nalco as "the preeminent publicly held water treatment chemical company in the world.

Infrastructure is another great picks and shovels play on water. This is one of my favorites, because it is easy to understand and there are several good ideas in the space. Infrastructure covers all the pipes, pumps, valves, and more that make up the physical framework that supports water delivery. As Hoffmann says, the importance of this sector "cannot be overemphasized."

This is why I've recommended several of the best players in water pipe and water pump manufacturing. I expect their sales and profits to enjoy a huge tailwind over the coming years.

To sum up, if you're looking for long-term water investments, keep in mind the pressure water utilities will face to keep their profits down. Avoid it. The "picks and shovels" of the water boom offer much bigger opportunities.

This post was republished from dailywealth.com.

Why You Shouldn't Listen To George Soros

When you hear legendary investors like Soros or Buffett make positive comments about the economy, that doesn't necessarily mean you should go all in. Keith Fitz-Gerald from Money Morning discusses how you should interpret the comments from people like Soros or Buffett and what you can learn from their approaches to investing.

Billionaire investor George Soros thinks the worst of the global financial crisis is behind us.

In a June 20 interview with Polish television, the Hungarian-born Soros acknowledged that this has been the most serious crisis he’s seen in his lifetime, but said, “Definitely, the worst is behind us.”

For those that like to interpret “Soros-speak,” that’s as powerful a sign as any that one of the world’s most successful investors is “going long.”

But is he wrong?

On one hand, the World Bank is busy roiling the markets with recently updated figures that project a 2.9% decline in global economic activity this year. Then there are the signs that the “green shoots” (how I’ve come to detest that term) may be more like weeds. Debt is devastating the developed world and the once-mighty G-7 looks more like a G-1 every day.

On the other hand, I wouldn’t bet against him. When it comes to financial influence and acumen, Soros is about as powerful and prescient as they come. He’s made billions over the years speculating on things that others simply couldn’t see or, more often, didn’t want to believe. He’s as iconic as he is legendary for making big bets on market timing even if, by his own admission, he’s not always right.

For the millions of investors who are tempted to interpret Soros’s comments as bullish, that admission forces me to urge caution. In fact, my advice to proceed with caution extends to any comments that might be made by such other investment legends as Warren Buffett, or even Soros’ former investment partner, noted author and commentator Jim Rogers.

I preach caution for three reasons:

• Despite the fact that each of these men is fabulously successful, the typical retail investor has no idea how much money they’re betting on the upside, or what percentage of their wealth is involved in any publicized position.

• It’s not clear what - if any - protective stops are being used so you don’t know whether the positions they’ve taken represent core portfolio holdings or speculative trades.

• These revelations - disclosures - are usually made after the fact, which means that investors who may want to tag along for the ride are put in the risky position of having to make “me too” investments.

So if you’re a savvy investor, what steps can you take to translate moves being made by three of the best investors of our time into profits of your own?

A good place to start is by taking the time to understand precisely what drives these guys. Even though Rogers hunts for opportunities around the world, Soros tends to pursue investment plays involving currencies and macroeconomic trends, and Buffett is a deep value guy, they are more alike than they are different. That’s especially true since the core elements of the strategies these three investors use to win and profit usually run counter to Wall Street’s conventional wisdom.

Take the very concept of profits, as an example. Most people are surprised to learn that none of these gentlemen sits around over coffee in the morning, rolling his hands with an evil laugh as he wonders aloud how much money he’s going to make on that day. But nearly all have gone on record at one point or another talking about the importance of not losing money in the first place. They’ve also repeatedly stressed the importance of waiting until the really compelling opportunities develop before they put their money at risk.

Rogers, once Soros’ partner at the Quantum Fund, a hedge fund that’s often described as the first real global investment fund, goes a step further. He describes his investment process as a little like waiting until somebody else puts money down in the corner, then “walking over and picking it up.”

Another common trait is that not one of these three investors believes that you have to take big risks to make big money. In fact, all three gentlemen believe, as I do, that it’s how you concentrate your wealth that matters.

This flies in the face of what Wall Street would have you believe which is that you need to diversify your assets to get ahead. Diversification as Wall Street practices it is a complete misuse of the math and a proxy for an entire establishment that doesn’t know what it’s doing.

The thinking is that by spreading your money around willy nilly, some of your holdings will rise in value, even as other parts of the portfolio fall. Even so, by diversifying, Wall Street says that you will be better off for it over the long run. Granted, there are some instances where taking steps to “diversify” leaves you better off than if you’d done nothing at all, but one of the critical problems with diversification as Wall Street has practiced it is that it doesn’t work when everything goes down at once - as so many investors who had been led to believe they were protected found out the hard way in 2000 and again in 2007.

That’s why, for example, I’m a proponent of concentrating my efforts on a few relatively high-probability choices, especially when it comes to trading services, such as the Geiger Index or the New China Trader, for example. It’s a strategy that individual investors should consider, as well.

But what matters most is that people put the comments they hear from these guys into perspective and think for themselves. It’s important to remember that neither Buffett, nor Soros nor Rogers care about what other people think. That’s one of their real strengths. Nor do they care what the markets will or won’t do.

In fact, none of the three - as least as far as I can tell from the research that I’ve done - subscribes to the “random walk” or “efficient market” theories I’ve mentioned as complete bunk in recent months.

The bottom line is that Soros, Buffett and Rogers have demonstrated time and again that they’ll only make a move when they’re darned good and ready - when they’ve done all they can to scope out the situation at hand, and done everything possible to make sure that the percentages are in their favor.

That, alone, is a terrific lesson for retail investors to learn. Wall Street tries to push investors into action with advertisements that portray “real” people making trades from their kitchens, or getting the latest quotes on their mobile phones. They show attractive retired couples who’ve achieved their dreams with big sailboats, or antique cars, or on expensive vacations. Ignore those messages and you’ve effectively elbowed aside the artificial sense of urgency that Wall Street is trying to create.

Not only is this manufactured urgency designed to separate more of you from your money, but they wouldn’t do it if they knew that most investors got it “right” more often than they got it wrong.

Buffett, Soros and Rogers act only when they believe the time is right. Buffett has referred to this as waiting for the Sunday pitch. If you’ve never heard that term before, it’s one that dictates extreme patience while all the spitballs, knucklers and sliders go by. You only take action when the one pitch you know you can hit out of the park is on its way - then you swing from the heels, giving it all your effort.

There’s one final task that these guys do better than almost anyone - and that’s to keep everything in perspective. They assemble their portfolios carefully with diligent planning, attention to detail and an emphasis on the objectives they expect to achieve. They make investments based on a clearly defined set of expectations and do not hesitate to cut their losses if they find out they were wrong.

In that sense, every investment choice they make fits a specific role in their portfolio. Nothing, if they can help it, is left to chance. So to the extent there’s any action to be taken right now, let me leave you with one final thought.

No nation in the history of mankind has ever bailed itself out by doing what we’re doing now, which means that placing bets on a “recovery” is really a fool’s errand. On the other hand, making choices that capitalize on the trillions of dollars now being injected into the world’s financial system is the place to be. History shows that it’s better to be generally long resources, inflation-resistant choices, and real companies with real earnings.

Not only will these types of profit plays fall less than others if the markets stumble and fall from here, they’ll also rise faster and farther once the capital infusions start to work their way through the global financial system and the rebound gets under way.

And I’ll bet my bottom dollar that George Soros knows it.

This article was republished from Money Morning, an investment news website.

PPIP May Have Succeeded Before It Was Ever Launched

Although the Public-Private Investment Program may never launch with its promised luster, it may have already achieved its goal. An interesting article by Noam Scheiber suggests that the idea of PPIP may have improved Wall Street's spirits enough to allow banks to raise private capital on their own. Mark Thoma from Economist's View discusses this in the following post.

The Treasury view, Free Exchange: ...Noam Scheiber has a nice post up examining the view of PPIP—the plan to sell subsidised toxic assets at auction—from inside the Treasury. Here's a quote from a Treasury official:

...If you had asked--I don’t want to speak for the secretary--what’s problem number one? I think he'd say capital. Problem two? Capital. Problem three? Capital. Everything was in the service of that view. The legacy loans program was meant to help clean balance sheets. It was not an independent good in itself. It was seen as friendly to equity raising. Now people say the legacy loans thing is not gaining as much traction, so is that a failure? But because we had a good outcome in terms of raising equity, [the banks] were able to raise equity without shedding assets ... you should be okay with that.

Mr Scheiber also reprints a quote from a Goldman Sachs employee, originally in the Wall Street Journal, noting that PPIP is "the greatest program that never occurred... [because it] created confidence in the markets so banks can raise equity capital".

I don't know that I buy the Treasury spin—that they saw that banks needed more capital than the government could provide, and so they crafted an incredibly generous asset purchase plan understanding that it would boost Wall Street spirits, allowing banks to raise private capital and thereby making actual deployment of the plan unnecessary. Remember just how dire things appeared at the time of the plan's construction, and recall how many defenders of the plan—myself included—argued that there were no other options with tolerable risk levels available. Meanwhile, it's not clear that PPIP (as opposed to other interventions or the natural resolution of the crisis) had anything to do with the market's rebound, which began well after the initial description of the administration's proposal and well before the release of key programme details.

Which isn't to say that no one in the administration foresaw this possibility or planned for it. I would argue, however, that the current state of affairs was not really the expected outcome, and that the banking plan benefitted enormously from events outside of Treasury's control.

I don't disagree with that. But if it's true that the plan inspired confidence, intended or not, and that caused private investors to put capital into these institutions based upon the assumption that the banks would be made healthier by ridding themselves of toxicity through the PPIP, and now the government says "just kidding," isn't that a double-cross? Would the private investors have still put capital into the banks had they known the double-cross was coming? And if they wouldn't have, doesn't the continued presence of these assets on the books mean there's more risk present than we ought to be comfortable with?

This article was republished from Mark Thoma's blog, Economist's View.

Why National Health Care Insurance And Cap-And-Trade Are Terrible For The Economy

Is this the right time for the government to pursue ambitious and potentially expensive new reform to healthcare and the environment? Peter D. Schiff argues that such action are not only detrimental to the economy, but have little chance of achieving success. See the following post from Money Morning.

Misguided government policies have already dealt vicious body blows to our economy, but that hasn’t stopped politicians last week from launching two new kicks to the recovery - a national health insurance plan and a carbon emissions regulation system called “cap-and-trade.”

Even if these plans could achieve their desired ends, which is highly unlikely, I would have hoped Washington would refrain from throwing more monkey wrenches into the economy until it shows some signs of resurgence. The last thing we need right now is to further encumber our economy with higher taxes and additional regulations.

The meteoric rise in healthcare costs, which has become an unending nightmare for U.S. businesses and consumers, is not an accident. This painful condition arose from excess government involvement in the system, tax provisions that encourage the over-utilization of health insurance, and government support of an out-of-control malpractice industry. Rather than allowing more bad policy to drive healthcare costs further upward, we should be looking at ways to allow market forces to reign them back in.

If left alone, the free market drives quality up and costs down. Government programs produce the opposite result. Despite the president’s claim that a federal plan will bring costs down, there is no historical precedent for such faith.

Simply providing more widespread health insurance, as the Obama administration plan offers, is not a solution. In fact, it will aggravate the problem. Since consumers no longer pay for routine medical expenses out of pocket, comprehensive health insurance creates a moral hazard for both patients and doctors. To maximize the value of the health insurance “benefit,” most workers opt for low deductibles and co-pays. Therefore, doctors learn that their patients are not concerned with the cost of care, and so they are free to bill insurance companies at the maximum allowable rates.

Given our current tax code, the simplest way to bring down medical costs would be to fully tax healthcare benefits as wages and simultaneously increase the personal deduction by an amount significant enough to neutralize the effect of the tax increase.

This would do two things: First, the uninsured would get a huge pay increase, enabling them to buy reasonably priced catastrophic policies. Second, those currently insured could opt out of expensive employer-provided plans, trading premiums for extra wages, then buy a more economical plan. The savings would go right into their pockets.

The bottom line is that aggregate medical costs won’t come down unless services are rationed more wisely. Rather than being used as a pre-payment plan for routine care, insurance should only cover unpredictable, catastrophic costs.

As a comparison, homeowners often carry fire insurance, but seldom maintenance insurance. You buy fire insurance to guard against a catastrophic loss, which is a low probability but high cost event. As a result, fire insurance is relatively affordable, since premiums paid by all those homeowners whose houses do not burn down more than pay for the losses on those few whose houses do.

On the other hand, no one carries home maintenance insurance to pay for a clogged drain or broken garage door. If insurance paid for the plumber visit every time a toilet overflowed, we would now have a plumbing crisis, and Congress would be looking to reign in runaway plumbing bills with “national plumbing insurance.”

In his press conference, U.S. President Barack Obama claimed that government insurance would not drive private providers out of business. This is absurd. As the government provider will not have to produce a profit or accurately account for its contingent liabilities, it will provide insurance on an actuarially unsound basis.

With taxpayer subsidies, the government provider can run losses indefinitely. If private insurers did this, they would either be shut down or go bankrupt. Therefore, the cost of government provided health insurance will not be confined to the premiums paid, but will include the taxpayers’ bill to continually bail out the government provider.

When Medicare was first proposed back in 1966, it cost $3 billion per year, and the projection was for inflation-adjusted annual costs to rise to $12 billion by 1990. The actual cost in 1990 was $107 billion, and the 2009 estimate is a staggering $408 billion! So much for government estimates on health care.

As if this were not bad enough, the House of Representatives voted to pass the American Clean Energy and Security Act, otherwise known as the “cap and trade” bill. Disguised as an environmental bill, this proposal is merely another gigantic tax.

The lion’s share of the new revenue is already committed to politically connected special interests that will reap windfalls at everyone else’s expense. To make matters worse, the bill before Congress amounts to a blank slate, with the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) empowered to draft the details in any manner they see fit. If Congress is going to shoot the economy in the knee, they should at least be required to pull the trigger themselves.

“Cap and trade” will do nothing to reduce pollution, yet it will drive up production costs throughout the economy - rendering us even less globally competitive than we are today. In addition to the huge cost of paying the tax, its enforcement involves the creation of an entire new bureaucracy, the costs of which will be borne by American consumers in the form of higher prices.

Years of reckless borrowing and spending have left us in a gigantic hole. Getting out of it requires that we make the most effective use of all available resources. We need labor and capital to operate as efficiently as possible so we can save and produce our way back to prosperity.

Unfortunately, national health insurance and “cap and trade” are two steps in the wrong direction. Rather than getting us out of this hole, they will merely cave in the walls around us.

This post was republished from Money Morning. You can also view this post at Money Morning, an investment news website.

Data Shows Housing Market Improving

The latest from the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes shows that price declines are slowing down with some metropolitan areas showing slight growth in property values in April. See the following post from The Mess That Greenspan Made for more on the latest numbers from the housing market.

The April report(.pdf) for the S&P Case-Shiller Home Price Indexes showed an easing of home price declines across the country after months of record declines. From March to April, the 20-city index fell just 0.6 percent, its "least bad" reading since last June, and the annual rate of decline improved from -18.7 percent to -18.1 percent.

Note that the top-to-bottom end-positions of the curves on the right of the chart correspond to the order in the legend in the upper left to aid in viewing the data.



Poor Detroit continues to plumb new lows, the index falling from 71.67 in March to just 69.2 in April, well off the bottom of the chart.

As shown below, Phoenix maintained its leadership role in year-over-year price declines with an astonishing 35.3 percent plunge, only slightly improved from last month's 36.0 percent decline. Conditions worsened in Las Vegas, however, April's annual decline of 32.2 percent exceeding the 31.2 percent drop seen in March.

San Francisco moved from the 30+ percent decline group (indicated by red underlines) back to the 20+ percent decline group (indicated by blue underlines), however, there were no similar moves out of the 20+ percent decline group which now numbers seven.



David M. Blitzer, Chairman of the Index Committee at Standard & Poor's notes:

The pace of decline in residential real estate slowed in April. In addition to the 10-City and 20-City Composites, 13 of the 20 metro areas also saw improvement in their annual return compared to that of March. Furthermore, every metro area, except for Charlotte, recorded an improvement in monthly returns over March. While one month’s data cannot determine if a turnaround has begun; it seems that some stabilization may be appearing in some of the regions. We are entering the seasonally strong period in the housing market, so it will take some time to determine if a recovery is really here.

The stock market bottomed in March and measures of consumer confidence have turned upward. This report shows that these better spirits are also appearing in the housing market.

Mr. Blitzer doesn't appear to be quite convinced yet - "some stabilization may be appearing in some of the regions" is not exactly a ringing endorsement of a return to normalcy.

It will take at least a few months of actual increases in prices before a bottom can reasonably be called. When exactly that happens is anyone's guess - my guess is that it won't be this year.

This article was republished from Tim Iacono's blog, The Mess That Greenspan Made.

China's Economic Strategy To Become The World's Biggest Superpower

China is taking advantage of the global recession to position themselves to eventually become the world's number 1 superpower. They are lending out massive amounts of money to countries like the US, and stockpiling gold in order to prepare for the possible fall of the dollar. Tony Straka from The Prudent Investor explains China's economic strategy and why we should all be watching very closely.

Shocked by the fact that lamestream media and Twitter are all about Michael Jackson's death from what appears to be a drug overdose, I enjoy being the spoiler for a world that seemingly does not know how to set its priorities anymore. While 33 of the 42 commercial media I regularly read headline with Jacko, it is Chinese media that published the truly important news of the day.

Here's the executive version of Chinese economic news picked from the English language People's Daily Online.

1. China takes public ownership as the main body and the other (issue) is to adhere to the common growth of economy belonging to diverse forms of ownership.
2. The People's Bank of China (PBoC) will stick to an appropriately easy monetary policy but will ensure reasonable growth in money and credit, the central bank said yesterday.
3. New credit in the first half of 2009 will definitely surpass 6 trillion yuan, and some experts even predict the figure to be up to 6.5 trillion yuan. This means that total credit in the first half of this year will be more than the total amount invested in any year since China was founded.
4. China should buy more gold because the dollar is poised for a fall and the metal is needed to support the greater international role envisaged for the yuan, a senior researcher with the ruling Communist Party said.

You can now go back to watch CNN's US propaganda broadcast and remain in the "don't worry, be happy" camp which still has a solid majority in the Western world. Or would you prefer to gather a little more intel on the next #1 power in the world? Then read on.
Bullet point #1 appears to point to a struggle of ideologies in the Chinese communist party. Chinese entrepreneurs certainly favor a more liberal business climate but one must not forget that there is still a gap as wide as the Amazon river between the Ferrari driving riches in towns and a rural hinterland where oxcarts and bicycles remain to be seen as signs of prosperity. In order to prevent social upheaval China needs to bridge this gap or it risks falling apart. The anonymous commenter in the People's Daily reminds the world that China still favors a hands-on approach:

Taking public ownership as the mainstay is a fundamental principle of socialism. In a socialist country like China, where people have become masters of their own destiny, it is imperative to keep public ownership of means of production as a basis of the socialist economic system. So, adherence to public ownership as the main body is of vital importance in giving play to the superiority of the nation's socialist system, increasing the nation's economic strength and promoting social harmony in the country.

Pointing out, that 26 of the 500 largest companies in the world as of 2008 are state-controlled Chinese corporations, the most populous nation on earth insists that it is not so much about ownership-ideology but about keeping up a harmonious people.

In a nutshell, it is imperative and essential to consolidate and develop the public ownership economy, to encourage, support and guide the growth of the non-public sector economy, and to maintain the right to equal access of property resources, so that a brand-new situation will emerge, in which all economic sectors will "vie with each other" on an equal footing so as to spur their economic activity for mutual advancement.

Confronted with a global economic downturn China's central bank made it clear this week that it will emphasize an easy monetary policy to keep its economy humming despite declining exports. In a stark contrast to the indebted western world China sits on roughly $2 trillion in assets, enabling it to conduct stimulus policies no country in the Western hemisphere could afford. Read their opinion on bullet point #2 in their own words as it also signals a concern about the environment:

In a summary of the conclusions drawn at its second-quarter monetary policy committee meeting, the central bank said yesterday that it would ensure reasonable growth in money and credit but would strictly control lending to polluting, energy-intensive industries...
"The top priority at the moment is to stop the explosive growth in lending at the end of the month and quarter," China Banking Regulatory Commission said in a recent notice to lenders, pointing to the phenomena of banks racing to offer loans before June to meet their half-year lending targets.

The Eastern dragon so far performs much better than any recession-stricken nation in the West, where money supply has rocketed to potentially fatal (hyper inflationary) levels. Covering bullet point #3 in their own words, China plays its monetary muscle.

People's Bank of China Monetary Policy Committee recently held a regular meeting on the second quarter of 2009. The conference studies the orientation of monetary policy and measures for the coming future, concluding that we need to implement moderately easy monetary policy and maintain the continuity and stability of policies to guide a reasonable growth in monetary credit.
It is learned that in the first five months, RMB loans increased by 5.84 trillion yuan. June figures have not yet been released, but according to past experience, new credit in the first half of 2009 will definitely surpass 6 trillion yuan, and some experts even predict the figure to be up to 6.5 trillion yuan. This means that total credit in the first half of this year will be more than the total amount invested in any year since China was founded.

2 Ways Through a Recession: China Can Afford It Because of Savings
Show me a Western country that could shell out a trillion Euros/dollars from its full pockets! There is no such thing. All stimulus packages Western politicians promise are only backed by the hope of future tax payments. China can dive through a recession on its savings whereas the so called first world has nothing else to show than debts that are enough of a burden for the two next generations.

Wouldn't we all love to have the same economic discussion as the Chinese where economists argue whether the economy has bottomed out at a growth rate of 6.1% in Q1 2008 or whether one should be skeptical about a possible GDP growth rate of 9%?

Diving into recent history (i.e. this blog's archive) China can actually see the global downturn as a benefit that helps keeping the economy from overheating. BTW, why are we actually concerned with "overheating" economies? Don't we all want to become rich by tomorrow? But I won't digress, this is an entirely different discussion best to be had over a bottle of good plum wine.

Let's better proceed to bullet point #4: China's growing role in forex markets.
Reuters staffers Zhou Xin and Alan Wheatley direct my attention to the fact that China sees a much bigger role of gold in global currency policy after surprising the world with the fact that it had domestically purchased gold and now sits on a hoard of 1,054 tonnes after publishing a figure of 660 tonnes since 2003.

Buy Gold Before China Buys It All

The communist party's chief economist told Reuters the following strategic goals (found on GATA's website):

China should buy more gold because the dollar is poised for a fall and the metal is needed to support the greater international role envisaged for the yuan, a senior researcher with the ruling Communist Party said on Thursday.
Li Lianzhong, who heads the economic department of the party's policy research office, said China should use more of its $1.95 trillion in foreign exchange reserves to buy energy and natural resource assets.
Speaking at a foreign exchange and gold forum, Li also said that buying land in the United States was a better option for China than buying U.S. Treasury securities.
"Should we buy gold or U.S. Treasuries?" Li asked. "The U.S. is printing dollars on a massive scale, and in view of that trend, according to the laws of economics, there is no doubt that the dollar will fall. So gold should be a better choice."

Following the nuances of Chinese official-speak it is clear that China sees itself superior in monetary policy but is left with a problem it shares with all creditors in the world: Its forex reserve stash consists mainly of unbacked Federal Reserve Notes (FRNs), a fiat currency backed by nothing else than the belief it will buy you the same amount of goods and services in the future as it did in the past.

China takes appropriate steps at its own rhythm to secure a bigger role for the Yuan in the future. Looking at the Yuan's slow revaluation so far China has made good on its promises to the bankrupt USA.

The Reuters story sums it up correctly:

Li cited the high share of gold in the foreign exchange reserves of the United States, Italy, Germany, and France to argue that China's gold holdings, which account for about 1.6 percent of its reserves, are too small.
China does not disclose the composition of its currency reserves, but bankers assume around 70 percent is held in dollar assets.
China is the largest single holder of U.S. Treasuries, with $763.5 billion at the end of April, according to U.S. Treasury data.
Analysts say this data set understates the true number as it does not capture paper bought through dealers in London or elsewhere.
Li said a second reason for buying more gold would be in anticipation of the yuan one day becoming a reserve currency.
The yuan is not convertible on the capital account, meaning it cannot be freely traded for other currencies for financial transactions that are not related to trade. This rules out the yuan's use as an international reserve currency, for central banks would not be able to convert it quickly if necessary.
But in a very preliminary step toward that goal, China is paving the way for greater use of the yuan beyond its borders.
The People's Bank of China has arranged currency swap deals with six countries since December totalling 650 billion yuan ($95 billion) so that trade and investment with China can be conducted in yuan, not dollars.
And China will soon allow selected firms in the southern province of Guangdong that trade with Hong Kong to settle their transactions in yuan, or renminbi.
"If the yuan should go international or become a reserve currency, China needs more gold to back that," Li said.

One must not forget that China's political state supports long term strategies for which Western leaders who want to get reelected every 4 years have no leeway.
Reuters fills in here very well too:

When the yuan does become an international currency, which Li acknowledged was a long way off, he said the composition of the SDR should be reformed to include the Chinese currency.
Ideally, in the long term, the SDR would be made up of the dollar, euro, sterling, yen, and yuan, each with a weighting of 20 percent, Li said.
The SDR is currently made up of the dollar (with a weighting of 44 percent), the euro (34 percent), the yen (11 percent), and sterling (11 percent)
The four currencies in the SDR, which must be convertible, are those issued by fund members with the largest share of global trade. The weights assigned by the IMF are based on the value of exports and the amount of reserves denominated in those currencies.
The composition of the basket is reviewed every five years. the next review is due in 2010.

Rest assured that the dragon will blow some hot air down the Western world's spine in the run-up to this review.

This was reposted from Tony Straka's blog, The Prudent Investor.

Obama's Proposal For Requiring Bank "Funeral Plans"

An arguably much needed change outlined in the Obama administration's financial regulation overhaul proposal is the requirement of a "rapid resolution plan". This would provide the government with important information in the event that a systemically important financial institution faces collapse. For more, see the following post by economist Mark Thoma, author of Economist's View.

No disagreement with this. The failure to have dissolution plans for systemically important institutions on the shelf and ready to go turned out to be costly, so credible dissolution plans are certainly needed. However, the argument seems to assume that too big and too interconnected firms cannot be avoided, something I'm not ready to concede:

A sound funeral plan can prolong a bank’s life, by Anil Kashyap, Commentary, Financial Times: Buried within the 88-page Obama administration proposal to overhaul financial regulation is an overlooked option called a “rapid resolution plan”. It mandates that systemically important financial companies be required regularly to file a “funeral plan”: a set of instructions for how the institution could be quickly dismantled should the need to do so arise. ... It could be implemented now, without the need for legislative action. Regulators should do so immediately.

The first benefit is that regulators would gain a stronger negotiating position with a dying institution. Throughout this crisis the authorities have had to intervene without knowing exactly what hidden traps might emerge if a bank were to be closed down. The bankers know this and can exploit the fear of the unknown to press for bail-outs.

It is remarkable that such rules do not already exist. ... The crisis has shown us that the sudden unwinding of a large, complex financial institution is terrifying for the financial system. ...

A second immediate benefit would be to force bank managers to think much more carefully about the complex financial structures they have created. If bankers had to explain every single step needed (and the associated consequences) to shut down their subsidiaries in all the various jurisdictions in which they operate, they would have a big incentive to simplify their organisations. ...

Over the medium term, there would be additional benefits. The headline component of the plan would be the requirement for banks to estimate the number of days it would take to shut down. Banks that require longer to close would have to hold more capital. This would place management under serious pressure to improve their plans...

Senior members of the management team and the board would have to understand the funeral plan. Crucially, they would be forced to sign off on its accuracy. This might also lead to closer scrutiny of new products or lines of business if they jeopardised an orderly unwinding. ...

This proposal is far from a cure-all. One big problem is that resolution rules themselves, especially when multiple legal systems are involved, are quite complicated. But the plan has an extremely high benefit-to-cost ratio and could be put in place right away. ...

This post was republished from Mark Thoma's blog, Economist's View.

Is It Okay To Not Pay The Mortgage If You Are Significantly Underwater?

With large numbers of homeowners in the US underwater on their mortgages, more individuals are choosing to walk away from their mortgage even if they can afford to pay it. It may make financial sense if mortgage principal is $500,000 when the home is valued at $400,000, but is it right to not pay back a loan under these circumstances? The following post from The Mess That Greenspan Made, explores that question.

The Economist looks at the phenomenon of U.S. homeowners who can pay their mortgage, but who choose not to. Apparently, changing cultural norms are playing as big a part on the way down as they did on the way up for the U.S. housing market.

New research based on a survey of 1,000 homeowners suggests that one in four mortgage defaults are “strategic”—by people who could meet their payments but who choose not to. The main drivers of strategic default are the scale of negative equity, and moral and social considerations. Few would opt to renege on their mortgage if the equity gap were below 10% of their home’s value, the authors find, partly because of the costs of moving. But one in six would bail out if loans were underwater by a half.
...
Anger about bail-outs of banks or carmakers does not weaken the moral barrier to default. But people who live in neighbourhoods where home repossessions are frequent are more likely to welsh on loans. Homeowners who know someone who has defaulted strategically are 82% more likely to say they would do so, too. The likelihood of strategic default rises more quickly once the rate of local home foreclosures reaches a critical level. That hints at a vicious cycle of foreclosures that both depress home prices and weaken the social and economic barriers to further defaults.

Cocktail party chatter sure has changed dramatically in the last four or five years - from discussions of "$10,000 a month in appreciation" to how to "walk-away".

This blog post can also be viewed at The Mess That Greenspan Made.

Are The Positive Economic Signs Artificially Created?

Could the signs of economic improvement be a mirage created by the artificial propping up of the economy by unprecedented government intervention? James Picerno from The Capital Spectator explains why we should be suspicious of numbers like the 1.6% increase in disposable personal income.

One day we'll look back on 2009 and wonder what all the confusion was about. All will become clear and we'll know when the recession ended, when the bull market began anew and how and why the cycle turned. Meanwhile, we're wondering if the data du jour can be trusted.

Judging by the numbers of late, clarity is upon us, or so it seems. Income and spending are up among consumers. What's not to like? If this keeps up, we'll be back to the good old days by, oh, let's say the third week of September.

As for what we know today, disposable personal income jumped 1.6% last month on a seasonally adjusted basis, the Bureau of Economic Analysis reports this morning. That's the biggest monthly gain in a year. Not bad for what we've repeatedly been told is the deepest recession since the Great Depression.



That's only half the fun. The government also advises that personal consumption expenditures gained 0.2% in May, the best since February.

Is it a miracle? No, it's just your tax dollars at work. As the BEA noted in its press release today, "the pattern of changes in personal income and in DPI reflect, in part, the pattern of increased government social benefit payments associated with the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009." In other words, the guys and gals in Washington continue to print money and distribute it, creating a revival that otherwise doesn't exist. The extent of the government's intervention can be surmised once we recognize that wages and salaries actually fell by 0.1% last month.

There are two ways to interpret the news. The optimistic view is that the government's stimulus efforts will steady an otherwise anxious consumer. By putting more money into his pocket, the incentive to spend is heightened and the odds improved that a return to old consumption habits is near. The government payments are a bridge until the day when the private sector can resume more of the burden of financing consumption.

The darker view is that government-financed consumption is a tenuous lifeline that's a pale replacement for the real McCoy. As such, the burning question is one of asking when the labor market will revive? By that standard, there' still reason to be cautious about the remainder of 2009. The recession may be technically over, as we've discussed. But even making that leap of faith offers no short cut to good times.

The job market, after all, is typically the last to show convincing signs of recovery. For that reason, the National Bureau of Economic Research shuns employment trends for putting official dates on business cycle turning points. Minting new jobs, in other words, is usually the response to other economic stimuli. Conventional recoveries, then, don't begin with the labor market. Then again, this isn't a conventional business cycle.

Clearly, the government has moved heaven and earth to keep the economy afloat. Ours is an era of triumph for public-financed consumption. In both magnitude and timeliness, no government has ever acted with greater speed and depth in keeping the forces of contraction at bay. But that raises a question of whether Washington can keep the engineered consumption going long enough to wait for a bonafide economic recovery. We'll have an answer, perhaps soon. But at the moment we're still knee-deep in the first great macroeconomic experiment of the 21st century.

This blog post can also be viewed at The Capital Spectator.